The Coffin Dancer

Rhyme asked. “Between his fingers?”
    “Usually.”
    Rhyme looked at Sachs and for a moment the rift between them vanished. They smiled and said simultaneously, “Fingerprints!”
    Mel Cooper said, “Maybe. But how’re you going to find out? You’d have to take it apart.”
    “Then,” Sachs said, “we’ll take it apart.”
    “No, no, no, Sachs,” Rhyme said curtly. “Not you. We’ll wait for the bomb squad.”
    “We don’t have time.”
    She bent over the bag, started to open it.
    “Sachs, what the hell’re you trying to prove?”
    “Not trying to prove anything,” she responded coolly. “I’m trying to catch the killer.”
    Cooper stood by helplessly.
    “Are you trying to save Jerry Banks? Well, it’s too late for that. Give him up. Get on with your job.”
    “This is my job.”
    “Sachs, it wasn’t your fault!” Rhyme shouted. “Forget it. Give up the dead. I’ve told you that a dozen times.”
    Calmly she said, “I’ll put my vest on top of it, work from behind it.” She stripped her blouse offand ripped the Velcro straps of her American Body Armor vest. She set this up like a tent over the plastic bag containing the bullet.
    Cooper said, “You’re behind the armor but your hands won’t be.”
    “Bomb suits don’t have hand protection either,” she pointed out, and pulled her shooting earplugs from her pocket, screwed them into her ears. “You’ll have to shout,” she said to Cooper. “What do I do?”
    No, Sachs, no, Rhyme thought.
    “If you don’t tell me I’ll just cut it apart.” She picked up a forensic razor saw. The blade hovered over the bag. She paused.
    Rhyme sighed, nodded to Cooper. “Tell her what to do.”
    The tech swallowed. “All right. Unwrap it. But carefully. Here, put it on this towel. Don’t jar it. That’s the worst thing you can do.”
    She exposed the bullet, a surprisingly tiny piece of metal with an off-white tip.
    “That cone?” Cooper continued. “If the bullet goes off the cone’ll go right through the body armor and at least one or two walls. It’s Teflon-coated.”
    “Okay.” She turned it aside, toward the wall.
    “Sachs,” Rhyme said soothingly. “Use forceps, not your fingers.”
    “It won’t make any difference if it blows, Rhyme. And I need the control.”
    “Please.”
    She hesitated and took the hemostat that Cooper offered her. She gripped the base of the slug.
    “How do I open it up? Cut it?”
    “You can’t cut through the lead,” Cooper called. “The heat from the friction’ll set off the black powder. You’ll have to work the cone off and pull the wad of plastic out.”
    Sweat was rolling down her face. “Okay. With pliers?”
    Cooper picked up a pair of needle-nose pliers from the worktable and walked to her side. He put them in her right hand, then retreated.
    “You’ll have to grip it and twist hard. He glued it on with epoxy. That doesn’t bond well with lead, so it should just pop off. But don’t squeeze too hard. If it fractures you’ll never get it off without drilling. And that’ll set it off.”
    “Hard but not too hard,” she muttered.
    “Think of all those cars you worked on, Sachs,” Rhyme said.
    “What?”
    “Trying to get those old spark plugs out. Hard enough to unseat them, not so hard you broke the ceramic.”
    She nodded absently and he didn’t know if she’d heard him. Sachs lowered her head behind the tepee of her body armor.
    Rhyme saw her eyes squinting shut.
    Oh, Sachs . . .
    He never saw any motion. He just heard a very faint snap. She froze for a moment, then looked over the armor. “It came off. It’s open.”
    Cooper said, “Do you see the explosive?”
    She looked inside. “Yes.”
    He handed her a can of light machine oil. “Dripsome of this inside then tilt it. The plastic should fall out. We can’t pull it or the fingerprints’ll be ruined.”
    She added the oil, then tilted the slug, open end down, toward the towel.
    Nothing happened.
    “Damn,” she muttered.
    “Don’t—”
    She shook it. Hard.
    “—shake it!” Cooper shouted.
    “Sachs!” Rhyme gasped.
    She shook harder. “Damn it.”
    “No!”
    A tiny white thread fell out, followed by some grains of black powder.
    “Okay,” Cooper said, exhaling. “It’s safe.”
    He walked over, and using a needle probe, rolled the plastic onto a glass slide. He walked in the smooth gait of criminalists around the world—back straight, hand buoyed and carrying the sample rock steady—to